No, not Beihan but Dhala. I had it in my mind that the Beverley was landing left to right with rather more sand but I may well be wrong.
Talking of Dhala; as you are well aware, Dhala was a one-way strip. The Beverleys had to land towards the mountain and take-off away from it.
We simply could not hack Dhala with an Argosy because of the shortness of the strip, the fact that it was about 3,500 ft amsl and that the temperature was ISA+30. So, we used to supply-drop instead, usually with 1-ton containers.
Those of you in the know will remember that our good friend Gamil Abdul Nasser, who had completely forgiven us for interfering in the Suez campaign, thought that he should move into the Old Yemen and cause us all a great deal of grief.
And so it was that they started to build a concrete blockhouse just over the border north of Dhala. In this blockhouse was mounted a Russian 155 mm howitzer. So, every now and then, they lobbed a shell on to the camp at Dhala and people started to suffer some discomfort and the odd person got killed.
The local Army commander, not unreasonably, asked that the RAF deal with the problem. Well, we had a Labour Government at the time and they were in their tree-hugging mode and were only prepared to allow "minimum force" - whatever that means.
In the initial phase, the Governor authorised the Hunter Squadrons (8 and 43) to attack the blockhouse with rockets. Well, this was about as effective as picking your nose with boxing gloves. Unless you were lucky enough to put a rocket through the letter box in the three foot thick bunker, forget it.
After a few more casualties, No. 37 (Bomber) Squadron were finally invited to sort the problem out with one of their Shackleton MR.2 aircraft loaded with 1,000 lb bombs.
There was a bit of a raffle to determine just who was going to do the business and my "nextdoor neighbour but one" was selected out of a cast of thousands.
Off they went to Dhala loaded with 1,000 lb bombs. I believe they missed with the first two but then consigned the blockhouse and its contents to the land of the 72 virgins.
Feeling quite pleased with themselves, they set off back to Khormaksar at low level. In the Wadi Habilayn, they flew past a bloke on a donkey. Bloke on donkey had a rifle just like everyone else in that part of the world.
Sgt Signaller in the port beam called captain to say that man with donkey had hit the Shackleton with a bullet and that there was an entry and an exit hole in said aeroplane.
My next door neighbour but one (who simply has to remain anonymous) flew a racetrack pattern and dropped a 1,000 ponder on bloke plus donkey!
Had this story escaped into the left wing tree-hugging press, there would have been an international outrage.
Those of us who were on the receiving end of the other side of terrorism, I thought it was wonderful and I envied my man hugely. It reminded me of the famous scene from the "Crocodile Dundee" movie where the mugger with the knife has a go and Crocodile Dundee pulls out this massive machette and says "that's not a knife - this is a knife"!